


==> Be Meenah

by Unda



Series: It's the end of the world as we know it [25]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Mind Control
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-29
Updated: 2018-01-29
Packaged: 2019-03-11 01:46:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13514181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unda/pseuds/Unda
Summary: Comprises free will section ==> Be Meenah in chapter 34 of MC Escher





	==> Be Meenah

==> Be Meenah

Whale, who else would you be? Obviously everyone wants to be you, you're preeeeeetty sure that even your fellow heiress would rather be you than be hershellf. 

So, whatever, you're yourself. More importantly Karkat has decided that you should do what you were literally made to do, rule. You have some feelings about your group, though. Bad ones. 

You are stuck with Porrim who constantly worries about if things are 'a good idea', Aranea who is glubbin bossy, Kurloz who doesn't have two brain cells to rub together and a damned babysitter in the form of The Summoner! Not exactly a breem team here. You have half a mind to complain to Karkat but you're pretty sure that the other teams all have their own things to whine about and you don't want Karkat to get the impression that you can't lead in less than favourable conditions. You'll whip this team into order reel quick. 

"Okay team, we're going to my planet!" you declare, whirling your double ended trident around in one hand as you talk. 

"Why?" Aranea asks, pushing her glasses up her nose. 

"BeCAUSE I said so! Anyway, my planet is the best and dishes out the best experience points for anyone's escheladder. Anyway, why can't you be more like Kurloz about it, huh? He doesn't have anything bad to say about it!" you point out. 

"His mouth is sewn shut, that might have something to do with it." Porrim points out. 

"Well, that said I think unless anyone else has a better plan I don't see anything wrong with getting some combat experience on your planet Meenah." The Summoner says with a smile. 

You try not to cringe back, no matter how much time you've spent on Earth or around these guys it still is never not weird to see adults in person, much less so close to you. 

"Well, combat is something that we will probably need. I can live with that." Porrim agrees thoughtfully. 

"Hm, ok then." Aranea nods. 

You look at Kurloz and he flashes you a thumbs up. 

"Great then let's GO!" you insist and march out of the communal dining area and when you get to the open hangar of the ship you take off with your jetpack, not looking behind to see if the others are following. Good leaders aren't insecure about whether people agree with them or not, they just DO. 

The Land of Gold and Glory gleams and glitters enticingly as you fly to it. Other people's planets look pretty lame but yours is the best of them all. Oh, back on Alternia you had a huge undersea cavern of treasure. This planet is just like home, only without all of the water and with more things to fight. The trolls and animals back home knew not to mess with you but the underlings of the game are far too dumb to realise that you mean biznizz! 

You cut your jetpack and slide down a mountain of gold, with a happy sigh. 

"You know, there's a human saying. 'Money can't buy happiness.'" Porrim says thoughtfully as she picks up a crown and turns it around in her hands. 

"Yeah and having food doesn't make you not hungry, eating it does. The having it part is kind of important for that." you snort, what a dumb phrase. 

"I have to admit I've always thought it was a silly turn of phrase but I do get what it's aiming at. I wonder, is the game giving you all this treasure on your planet to teach you something like that or to make you let your guard down around something you like so much?" she muses. 

An underling lunges over the ridge of a treasure mound, falling towards you with its sword drawn. It's one of the one's with the human Bro's face, you like those ones because they're far more of a challenge. You leap to your feet and jab your trident out at it, skewering it before you even come in range of it. 

"What gives you the idea that my guard is down?" you ask with a grin. 

"So are we just hunting underlings then?" Aranea asks. 

"Whale actually around the way there is a big dome and they're running drag races on chariots with fightin' and stabbin' all over the place. I had been planning to coral a few people into doing it with me before but since you're all here..." you trail off and waggle your eyebrows at them.

"Sounds awesome!" The Summoner says brightly. Ugh, just remembering that he's there dampens your mood. 

Regardless the five of you shimmy on down to the arena and one of your consorts tells you that you've got to build your own chariot to race. With you directing the whole thing doesn't turn out half bad, so it's only a few hours later that you're all careening around the arena. The Summoner is controlling the animal consorts charging around pulling your chariot and sometimes controlling those of others into crashing. The rest of you are perched on top of your chariot fighting anyone who comes close. 

You watch in glee as Kurloz clubs a squid faced underling so hard he bursts. Porrim throws herself at the chariot behind you and straight up saws that beach in HALF with her chainsaw! Even Aranea shows surprising skill at leaping from moving vehicle to moving vehicle, boarding others and ruthlessly taking them down. 

"How'd you learn to do that?!" you ask with a wild laugh as she leaps back to your chariot and lands on the ridge of it without a single wobble to her balance. 

"Didn't you know? I spent a sweep or two on Mindfang's pirate ship, this is almost nostalgic." Aranea says, sweeping hair out of her eyes and flashing you a smile that you are shore is supposed to be smooth and casual but is a touch too eager to be believable. Still, it IS cool!

"Damn, gill I didn't know you had it in you!" you laugh wildly. 

When The Summoner stampedes your vehicle across the finish line you're damn near the only one still standing, everyone else taken out by your and yours. You ROCK. 

The win grants you all a decent kick up the escheladder, a little more even because you don't think The Summoner counts as a player so your experience is divided by four instead of five. 

You all break for lunch on a nearby mountain of gold. 

"They didn't even see us COMING!" you cackle, swinging your legs wildly. 

"I have to admit it was fun, right Kurloz?" Porrim asks and Kurloz flashes an ok sign with his hands. 

"Hey, I've been meaning to ask about him. He never talks?" you ask. 

"Well- I've heard him a few times. Once arguing with Karkat of course but mostly no. He keeps his lips stitched shut to try to force him not to but he's split a lip before to argue." Porrim explains. 

"Yeah, I thought I'd heard that before." you nod. 

"It is how Meulin lost her hearing, not that it was your fault of course Kurloz. You were only little too." The Summoner says, tipping his head back so he can see the clown. Ugh, he looks sad and there's nothing grosser than a sad clown. 

You twist around to see Aranea higher up the gold mountain, her hand is shading her eyes from the sun as she looks around in the distance.

"What do you sea?" you call up. 

"I heard the pun in that." she sighs and looks down at you.

"Whale?" you ask, pointedly. 

"There's a line of treasure chests up that hill over there, it might be something." she says and then turns to slide down the side of the hill to where you are. 

You scramble up the hillside, sandwich in mouth, and peer over the top to try to see what Aranea saw. There’s a lot of hills of gold so it takes you a while to pick out the super distant one that is, as she reported, littered with chests. You slide back down and eat your sandwich in two big bites. 

“We’re gonna go see what’s in those chests!” you declare. 

It takes the others a minute or two to either finish eating or to get their food to a state where they can climb up and down hills with it. It takes a while to get there and, sure, you could use your jetpack but honestly that thing just isn’t always that fun. Besides on foot you get to lead skirmishes down on unsuspecting enemies. Finally you make it to the base of a rather steep hill. The first chest is just a few short bounds away. You flip the lid open with a heave to find a gold hilted sword with a gem encrusted hilt, not your weapon type but it’s damned pretty. 

“Oh, look at this!” Porrim gasps, peering into the chest ahead of yours. She stands up and displays a full set of gold plated gladiator armor. 

“That’d look so bitching!” you gasp, scrambling up to her. 

Kurloz waves his hand and attracts your attention, he hauls out a bigger version of your trident and throws it to you.

"Aw yeah!" you cheer and spin it around, jabbing at the air menacingly a few times for good measure too. 

"What's in that one, Aranea?" The Summoner shouts up and you turn to see that Aranea has bypassed all of the boxes along the way only to get to the top one. She is currently leaning into the chest but stationary, as if she's just staring at whatever it is that's in there without taking it out. 

"Hey, what've you got?" you yell and she slowly straightens up with her back to you. You look at Porrim and she shrugs. 

Kurloz jolts and whirls around to stare at her. Slowly Aranea turns and her eyes are- they're all wrong. They're flashing through a rainbow of colours and in her hand is a doll, a puppet thing. She throws herself at Kurloz, ramming the puppet right in his face and the two of them skid down the gold pile until they come to a stop at the bottom. 

You go to call out to them, to demand to know what's going on. You want to go over there and pull them apart. But neither your body nor your throat will obey you, you're stuck in place only just able to breathe. Kurloz is sprawled on the floor, puppet on his face and Aranea is sat on his stomach, staring up at the sky with her wrong eyes. You watch as the flashing multicolour recedes into her pupils and then fades. 

Calmly she gets up, standing up and picking the puppet up off of Kurloz's face.

Desperately you try to move again, to pull against the control that's holding you in place but you're stuck. You can't even turn your head or move your eyes to see if anyone else is under her spell. You guess that they must be or else someone else would be doing something. 

Kurloz shambles to his feet and reaches a clawed hand up, the sharp edge of it rips through the thread over his mouth but not without a good deal of purple blood flooding down his face. Aranea for her part is staring down at the puppet, looking it right in the eyes. 

Suddenly and totally without consent you find yourself pulling your jetpack on and taking to the air. You have no idea of where you're going or why but at least as you fly the others come into your field of view a little more. Their faces are all blank, like dolls. They're under Aranea's spell just as much as you are. You force the panic down and instead focus your force of will. You are an heiress, a faint little fish you ain't so you won't thrash about like a wounded animal. No, you will make repeated and strong attempts to break this mind control. Maybe you can lull Aranea into letting her control loosen on you before you break free and smash her face in so she can't do it again. 

You make yourself wait and simply observe as your body is taken to Kurloz's planet, the Land of Lakes and Inquisition. The sky is overcast here and in the dim light you can see distant fires burning and at the lake by the edges there are consorts tied to great weights and thrown in the water. You make a break for control as you descend to the top of a hill where a flat stone platform awaits you but you don't manage to wrest control back enough to get free. 

"It should be here. It should be." Aranea mumbles. She walks around the rectangle of stone on the floor repeatedly and you realise that there's supposed to be a quest bed here. Where could it possibly be now? Aranea is still circling, like a stupid toy stuck on the same instruction. 

She halts. The puppet's head tips back seemingly of its own accord as does Aranea's. She nods, though no one said anything and all of you fly again. Watching Kurloz it seems that he has more control, he seems like himself. Which makes no sense, why would he go along with this bananas plan unless...

Before, when the game first started. You saw this puppet then, it had been giving him and Gamzee ideas. Or at least that was Karkat's explanation which you had never given credit to, but now you see it. He must be under its control again along with Aranea and the rest of you are under hers. Shit! Well, ok, Karkat managed to slap reason back into the clowns before, he can do it again can't he? And maybe Vriska can pull you out of Aranea's control, or control her into letting you go! You just have to keep your wits about you until then. 

Your head looks down without your say so and now it's clown tents everywhere, fucking great. This time when you land you're all around a quest bed that's still present. Bright purple and fitted with a weird symbol that looks like a laughing face. He calmly gets up onto the bed and sits down on it, legs crossed. Aranea's sword comes to her hand and she stabs him clean through the chest. Or not through it, her sword sticks in his chest and the clown falls over with a pained wheeze. 

You're forced to stand and stare. It feels like far too long but eventually the sword falls out of his chest and he's covered with a bunch of weird little flying insects and when they depart he is dressed... well, like a tool. He's standing there in a stupid purple outfit with that stupid face on it. He's wearing puffy shorts, silly little shoes and tights and even a goddamn tiara on his head. You thrash pointlessly for control but Aranea won't let you go. 

"Time." Kurloz intones seriously, pointing upwards. 

"Yes, then that bitch will see." Aranea says. Her mouth twists into a weird grin that doesn't look right on her face. 

As you all fly closer to the ship she stows the creepy puppet away in her sylladex and the five of you fly into the ship. Your phone pings and you are made to pull it free of your pocket and hold it up to Aranea, though you catch sight of it before you do. 

CG: HEY YOU'RE THE LAST TEAM BACK. EVERYONE'S HAVING A BIG MEETING IN THE MEETING ROOM CLOSEST TO THE CANTEEN IT'S 518 IF YOU CAN'T FIND IT BUT THE DOOR'S OPEN AND WE'RE JUST GETTING STARTED. 

Aranea smiles but it does not reach her eyes. This feels like it's going to go terribly wrong and no longer just for you. 

You're all marched to the meeting room, Aranea bursts in the doors first and startles people. In the front at the middle the three void players are standing together talking. 

“Oh good, you’re all here.” Aranea says brightly. You try desperately to psychically convey that you’re not the one in control of your body. 

“You made it, I think we’re just missing a few people. Where’d Rose go or-” Karkat starts.

“They’ll be here.” Dave says from his place leaning against the window. 

“We should contact Calliope.” Aranea insists. 

“Who?” Vriska asks, looking up from her conversation with Feferi. 

“The one we’ve been talking to.” She adds, her voice clunky. Vriska is looking on in suspicion. 

“The muse, you mean? Did they ever tell us their name? I don’t remember that.” Roxy frowns. 

“I don’t-” Karkat starts but Aranea just whips her phone out and the screen lights up on the wall behind Karkat. 

[arachnesGauze began trolling uraniumUmbra]

AG: TALK.

You stare at the screen and then a long moment later a reply comes up. 

UU: hello?

Aranea bursts into maniacal laughter, her arms clenched around her middle. 

UU: what are yoU laUghing at? i don’t Understand.

Aranea points her finger at the three void players and your new trident fills your hand. The Captors all screech out a cacophony of names but it’s too late.

"Hey, what-" Roxy starts to say just as you throw it at her. It lands in her chest with a meaty thump, buried in to the hilt. She gasps and stumbles back just as the halves of Horuss and Equius are separated by Porrim's chainsaw. There's screaming around you from the soulmates of the dead players but Aranea ignores it, staring at the screen and laughing. 

UU: oh god no! what's going on? this can't be happening!

And then on the screen more writing appears in vivid green.

UU: OH BuT IT IS. SISTER. IT IS. 


End file.
